Hungarian people leave large cities, residential areas around Lake Balaton grow

Last autumn’s census has indicated a growing number of people moving outside large cities, Marcell Kovács, the census’s project manager, told a press conference on Tuesday.

While the population of large cities has shrunk and that of their surroundings has grown, residential areas in the north-western part of the country and around Lake Balaton have also grown, Kovács said.

The census has showed that the number and size of homes had also grown, with fewer people living in one unit, Kovács said, adding that 237 people were living in 100 homes last year, 11 fewer than in 2011. In 2022, the national housing stock consisted of 4.6 million units, 190,000 or 4.3 percentage points more than in 2011, he added.

Concerning the size of homes, Kovács said the average size was 82 square metres, 4 sqm bigger than in 2011, with three or more bedroom units making up 30 percent of the total stock. He also added that about 70 percent of all units had a bathroom and modern heating.

Over one third of the housing stock was built between 1960 and 1980, 14 percent after 2000, and 16 percent before the second world war. The oldest buildings as well as the newest ones are in Budapest, Kovács said. Most units are of brick and mortar, while pre-fab construction is the second in Budapest and in large cities, while in villages adobe brick construction has been the second preference, he added.

According to the census, most people heat their homes with piped gas, but the smaller the settlement, the more often we will find other heating fuels, mostly wood, Kovács said. The number of units with electric heating has grown considerably, to 10 percent in Budapest and 9 percent in the provinces, he said.

As for renewable energies, the census found that 68,000 households used heat pumps, 165,000 solar panels and 28,000 solar heat collectors, the latter two being more popular outside Budapest, Kovács said.

Fully 73 percent of all homes are linked to the internet, Kovács said.

Kovács also said that the number of seasonally inhabited units was 599,000, or 13 percent of all units, 2 percentage points higher than in 2011.